Fantômas!

The ruthless criminal genius, master of disguise, sadistic mastermind, star of dozens of pulp novels! Hated by the authorities, loved by the surrealists.

My brother in law gifted me a bunch of installments of the original stories, all in cheap magazine format, which I am looking forward to reading - closest I'll probably come to reading pulp as pulp.

The silent serial is available via the Eureka Feuillade box set. It's got lots of the nightmarish imagery that made the surrealists fans, but I also value it for its location shooting of belle époque Paris and the pretty daring stunts - lots of people jumping off roofs!

In the 60's the character was reinvented for a trio of campy capers starring Jean Marais and Louis de Funés. They introduced a really cool sinister new look for Fantômas; the first entry in particular I found to be a solid action comedy. Things get dicier as De Funés starts taking over the franchise...

I have not read any of the Mexican comics. Is there an anime? There's bound to be an anime...

There was an Icelandic group called amiina that recorded an lp of music they had devised to accompany showings of the silent movie of Fantomas. They played NUIG in 2019 as part of the Arts In Action series. I bought a copy of the cd.

There was also a supergroup of alternative musicians who cut a few lps under the name Fantomas. I have their The Director's Cut cd which was reworkings of horror movie themes etc.
Band was Mike Patton on vocals, keyboards, melodica, adaptation, arranger, producer, artwork
King Buzzo(Osbourne of The Melvins) guitar
Trevor Dunn (Melvins etc etc) bass guitar
Dave Lombardo (Slayer) drums

Feuillade's 1916 Judex is on my watch list, at 5 hours in total it may remain there a while though. Love this era of master criminals, especially when they look like this:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/919SfIkOBIL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg

The good news is the installments are relatively short - Fantômas is the only one where each film is 60+ min, watching an episode of Judex will only take you 20-30 min. I recommend this approach also because the serials were produced with that in mind, thus a lot of recaps and cliffhangers.

My brother in law gifted me a bunch of installments of the original stories, all in cheap magazine format, which I am looking forward to reading - closest I'll probably come to reading pulp as pulp.

this sounds like an ideal way to read these

the first volume is available in a free Standard Ebooks edition, https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/pierre-souvestre_marcel-allain/fantomas/cranstoun-metcalfe

Somehow I had never seen Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik until recently --much better than I expected, top-grade Bava and highly recommended for Fantômas fans

Danger: Diabolik recommendation seconded! It was made back-to-back with Barbarella I believe (different directors but a lot of the same sets and cast) and you can tell.